London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Bushfires rage in Australia, wiping out homes and surrounding Sydney with flames

Fire chiefs in Australia are concerned that bushfires feared to have wiped out hundreds of homes overnight are just a devastating taste of a hellish summer of battling more blazes as the real fire season gets underway.

More than 100 homes are believed to have been destroyed and whole streets razed in some parts of the Blue Mountains, which turned black in some of the fiercest and fastest moving fires to wreak havoc across the state of New South Wales in more than a decade.

Blaze: A wrecked house in Yellow Rock, Blue Mountains, near Sydney
One man, 63-year-old Walter Linder, died of a heart attack while trying to save his home at Lake Munmorah on the Central Coast of the state.

Huge fire: A firefighter tackles flames west of Sydney
Sydney was a city under seige, surrounded by a 1200 kilometres fire front, stretching from the Tweed River in the north, across the Blue Mountains and down to the Southern Highlands at the other end of the state.

Home destroyed: A family look over the remains of their house
It is expected to take several weeks to put out all of the 99 fires currently burning - 26 of them still out of control - as fire crews from other states around Australia are expected to relieve their exhausted NSW colleagues from tomorrow.
Smoke: Fumes gather over Sydney Harbour Bridge